. ,. - ' q 50 I . :: ^':::"'þ '0" " ^ . 1 $ ':1 "..0,,: . : . " .)< ">- "' I "" iN fF J iiI ......t . .' t' . .<< . ' '. County, is now a ham- let of about three hun- dred people but was then a busy port. The tracks of the Cairo & Fulton, moving south and west from Cairo, reached the naturally graded prairie now oc- cupied by Hope in July of 1873. A depot was erected there to mark the line's momentary terminus, and the com- pany's land commis- sioner-one James M. Loughborough-was inspired to distinguIsh the terminus with a name. The name he chose was the name that he and his wife had chosen for their daughter. About a month later, on August 28th, the Cairo & Fulton-by then abruptly metamor- phosed into the more ambitious St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern Railroad- decided that Hope had a future as a town, and offered lots for sale. (T en years later, local records show, it was a town, of two thou- sand.) The railroad company also laid out the town streets. With much the same econ- omy of imagination that Loughborough had used in naming the town, the railroad named its streets, designating the street parallel- ing the tracks Division Street and its principal intersecting street Main Street. The streets paralleling Divi- sion on the north were named for the letters of the alphabet, those on the south were numbered (beginning with Second Street), and those flanking Main Street were named for the trees that came most readily to the nine- teenth -century mind: Spruce, Laurel, Hazel, Walnut) Elm, Vine, and Pine. In 1908, Vine Street was renamed Louisiana Street, to celebrate the coin- cidental arrival of the Louisiana & Arkansas and the Frisco. Hope is not only a railroad town but an active railroad town. It sees-and hears-the daily passage of some forty freight trains and (at the time of my . 'W & . .* '.) !Ill ---- . "I> .. "Do you know who you're talkzng to, Buster? You're talking to the guy with the biggest desk, biggest chair, longest drapes, and highest ceiling in the business!" down mansion that is a veritable hobo jungle. The hub of the business dis- trict (the intersection of South Main Street and Second Street) is prettily graced by a little islanded plaza, with benches and shiny live oaks and plant- ers of flowering shrubs and a geyser- ing ornamental fountain-a Housing and Urban Development project, built in 1976. Around the corner, on the wide sidewall of a three-story build- ing, is a painted advertisement, its let- ters faded but legible from up to two blocks away: "Delicious and Refresh- ing-Drink Coca-Cola-Relieves Fa- tigue-Sold Everywhere-5 ." The two most imposing buildings in Hope are the National Building and the First Baptist Church and they stand a block apart on Main Street The First Baptist Church-red brick with white t . :' \. ". 1 .' .1 . f,." ... . . .....,. ..' . - . . trim and a soaring golden steeple- embraces (with its wings and annexes and lawns and parking lot) most of a city block. The National Building, a four-story office building faced with white marble and equipped with one of the two elevators in town, stands empty, boarded up, a derelict. Idlers on the benches in the plaza in the morn- ing sit in its spectral shadow. Hope is and has always been a rail- road town. It is served by the main line of the Missouri Pacific, by a branch line of the Louisiana & Arkan- sas, and by a branch line of the Frisco. I t was, in fact, a railroad stop before it became a town. Its progenitor was the Cairo (Illinois) & Fulton (Arkansas) Railroad Company. Fulton, on the Red River, a tributary of the Missis- sippi, in southernmost Hempstead